TAIWAN:
THE FAMILY NEXT DOOR
How and why this island has never been a part of Communist China, and barely ever a part of China at all

by Rip Rense
(Sept. 1, 2022)

President Dwight D. Eisenhower visits Taipei, Taiwan, in 1960. The U.S. and Taiwan have a long, steadfast alliance. Eisenhower was the first U.S. president to make clear hat the U.S. would defend Taiwan against an attack from China.

               There is a great family in the house next door.
                You don’t know them well, but you always wave and exchange good will. The family minds its own business, the children don’t swear or smoke crack or play “gangsta rap.” They’re good kids, and it’s a good, tight-knit family, always friendly, always hospitable to everyone. Donates time, energy, money to all sorts of things, from children’s cancer wards to tutoring to helping stray animals. And everyone works extremely hard, to boot. Heroically hard, in fact.
                Oh, and the family next door invented magic lightbulbs that never go out, and has sold them cheaply to everyone in the neighborhood! As a result, the family is an essential part of neighborhood economy, much respected.
                The problem is this other family.
                It lives right next door to the good family, in a grotesque McMansion. The family members are unfriendly, arrogant, hostile. They have nothing to do with neighbors, leave massive amounts of trash everywhere, threaten anyone they dislike, and openly fart and belch, just to be annoying. They also lie so much that they have forgotten truth, if they ever knew it in the first place.
                And they are, of course, insanely jealous of family number one---so much so, that they have threatened to kill that family and take their house from them.
                Huh? Why?
                Well, family number two claims that because it is related to the original builders of the neighborhood, it therefore owns all the houses in it---and may evict or kill any occupants it chooses. Of course, family number one is also related to the original builders, but that doesn’t matter.
                For years---decades---family number two has sent out flyers, mailers, appeared on television, hired skywriters, and posted Internet disinformation denouncing family number one as ugly, ungrateful, nasty, rude, with bad breath. They have condemned family number one for refusing to peacefully turn over its house to family number two, and when the rest of the neighborhood points out that family number one is really nice, owns its own house, and has invented magic lightbulbs that they all need and use, family number two just threatens. . .
                To wipe out the entire housing tract and everyone in it!
                Craziest of all, family number two claims that family number one used to be part of its own house---and rebelled against it and ungratefully left. Never mind that this never happened. Pure fiction.
                This. . .
                Is the Taiwan situation, folks.
                No, I’m not being facile---this cartoonish analogy captures the matter. Taiwan and China are only related by proximity and circumstance. Repeat: only related by proximity and circumstance. They are, and have always been, two distinct places. Taiwan is not, as per relentless propaganda, a “renegade province of China,” and never has been (more later). It certainly never, never (and also never) has been part of communist China. Period.

                Today, Taiwan happens to be a vivacious, bustling, civilized, free democracy, a vital contributor to the world (microcircuits, of which they produce, ahem, 92 percent, is their “magic lightbulb”). It is also, according to most anyone who has spent time there, quite possibly the warmest and most hospitable country on Earth. Seriously. This is not hyperbole. There are rankings. Internations’ annual poll named Taiwan the most hospitable country in the world in 2021 (survey of 12,000 respondents representing 174 nationalities living in 186 different countries.) The travel website, Booking.com, ranked Taiwan the 3^rd friendliest country in the world in 2019. And on and on.
                 Yes, country. Of course Taiwan is a country. To say it is not is either the result of brainwashing by Beijing, ignorance, or cognition problems. It meets every conceivable functional definition of “country:” has its own government, education system, economy, culture, languages, borders, history, ethnicities, native peoples, cuisine, art, music, literature, film, beer (a qualification coined by the late Frank Zappa) etc. All are uniquely shaped and characterized by Taiwan history, people and context. Here is a little historical telescoping. . .
                To say that China has any claim on Taiwan would make sense in a Marx Brothers movie or Monty Python routine. The history of this island is a crazy-quilt tale of occupation, migration, instability, rebellion (and, at long last, stability.) It was variously visited and claimed by: the Dutch (who named it Ilha Formosa, or “beautiful island”), the Spanish, the French, the Qing Dynasty, Japan, the Nationalist Chinese. Hell, at one time, it was its own kingdom: in the 17^th century, Koxinga, a Ming Dynasty loyalist general who resisted the Qing (Manchu) conquest of China, fled to Taiwan, kicked the Dutch out, and established the Kingdom of Tungning! His descendants, whoever they might be, have more of a historic claim on Taiwan than modern China (which, again, has none at all.) But then, Koxinga was half-Japanese, so there goes even tangential Chinese right of heritage.
                The only time in Taiwan’s history when it was technically a part of China was during the Qing Dynasty, which annexed the 13,892-square-mile island in 1683, chiefly because it was busy annexing everything it could. The Qing rulers---Manchus, who differed in culture from the Han settlers making up most Taiwan---invested as much time and energy into ruling Taiwan as Madonna invests in humility. Okay, a little more than that. Up until 1895, when the Qings simply gave Taiwan to Japan to settle the First Sino-Japanese War, they had only managed to exercise a little control over Taiwan’s coastal areas---never beyond. The locals rebelled and rioted so often that there was an expression for Qing rule of the island that translated to “every three years an uprising, every five a rebellion.” 
                And who were these “locals?” Well, for the most part, they were the people from whom are descended about 70 percent of modern Taiwan’s population: immigrants from the coastal China province of Fujian (196 miles away) who arrived over roughly a 200-year period in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. These people have their own dialect, so-called Taiwanese (Hokkien), and are, for the most part, the architects of the modern Taiwan independence movement. The rest of today’s Taiwan population are Hakka (“guest people”)---a much-loved nomadic mainland clan whose immigration paralleled the Fujian group---and descendants of those who arrived with Chiang Kai-Shek and the Nationalists in 1949 (waishengren), plus various indigenous peoples. 
                See anything in that history about Taiwan being a “renegade province?” No, me neither. See anything indicating that Taiwan’s affairs are part of communist China’s “internal affairs,” as per the constant obnoxious claim? No, me, neither.

                As for the ignorant notion that because Mandarin is the principal language of China and Taiwan, and therefore they are part of the same country, well, you might as well ask, “Is the USA British?” It comes from British culture, utilizes English as a principal language. As does Canada. As does Australia. As does New Zealand. Are these countries British? Half the population of the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles is Chinese. Is it therefore part of China? Seventy percent of L.A.'s Chinatown is Chinese. Is it a "renegade province?"
                If you want to get down to cases, Taiwan was actually never a province of China at all, exclamation point, only formally designated a co-province with Fujian in 1887---eight years before the Qings ceded the island to Japan! That’s correct: the only time in history that Taiwan came anywhere near being a province of China, let alone a “renegade” one, was for eight years under the Qing---who could never control the place, anyhow, and didn’t try very hard to do so. They fobbed that job off on Japan. (And if you want to get really wonkish, some pro-Qing Taiwan officials declared the island the "Republic of Formosa" at the last minute, just to stave off Japanese rule---so one could argue that the place was formally independent of China in 1895!)
                Japan, for its part, tried to turn Taiwan into Japan Jr., more or less, over nearly fifty years---at one time outlawing any language other than Japanese, and imposing comprehensive, organized rule of the place for the first time its history. The occupiers were brutal, yes, but also built a great deal of infrastructure, including a north-south railroad, sanitation system, an excellent education system. (Plus, in a real move to modernity, headhunting was outlawed.) Still, ever-feisty locals resisted, and continued pesky, often bloody, uprisings.
                This ended with terms of Japan's World War II surrender, when it turned official governance of Taiwan over to Chiang Kai-Shek and the Nationalist Chinese (Kuomintang, or KMT) in September, 1945. When Chiang was finally defeated by Mao Tse-Tung in the China Civil War in 1949, he and his armies retreated to the island, declaring it Taiwan, Republic of China---preserving the last vestiges of the great statesman/philosopher Sun Yat-Sen’s dream of a free China. Yet Japan had left such an imprint that is fair to argue, if you want to take seriously communist China’s absurd territorial claim on Taiwan, that Japan has a more legitimate right to the place.
                With Chiang came about two million KMT soldiers, government and business elites, as well as much of China’s gold reserves, and the bulk of its national art/historical treasures. (These items, long housed in the National Museum in Taipei, remain the most extensive and important historical artifacts of China history.) The Chiang/KMT rule was marked by strict martial law and, yet again, horrific persecution of resistors. An estimated 140,000 Taiwanese deemed anti-KMT or pro-communist were tortured, imprisoned without trial, executed, or “disappeared” during what came to be called the “White Terror" period, which lasted until the repeal of martial law in 1987.   
                While Chiang’s ROC---always a staunch U.S. ally---remained autocratic and repressive through the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, Taiwan's economy flourished, with the government prioritizing industrialization and technological advance. This phenomenon, dubbed the Taiwan Miracle, led to the island becoming the second-fastest growing economy in Asia, trailing Japan, during the 1970’s. This economic boom was accompanied by a gradual loosening of martial law restrictions under President Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek's more liberal son and successor (1978 to ’88) who helped start Taiwan in the direction of democracy. (By the ‘80’s, no visitor to the country would have suspected there was martial law, so effervescent and apparently free was the society.)

Speaker Nancy Pelosi meets President Tsai Ing-wen in Taipei Aug. 3, 2022. Tsai called Pelosi "Taiwan's most devoted friend." (Background painting: Republic of China founder Sun Yat-sen.)

                 It was CCK, as he was popularly known, who imbued legitimacy and political power on the pro-independence so-called "native Taiwanese," culminating with his tapping Taiwan-born Lee Teng-hui (once a second lieutenant in the Taiwan Japanese Imperial Army!) to be his vice-president in 1984. The Democratic Progressive Party---the first opposition party to the KMT, was allowed to form in 1986, leading to the fully democratic society of today. CCK formally cancelled martial law in 1987.
                Tortured history? Emphatically. “Renegade province?” As much evidence that ducks have fur.
                If you really want to talk about “renegade provinces,” how about the 13 or 14 that actually rebelled against the Qings in 1911-12, to form the ROC under Sun Yat-Sen? Of course, they are all under totalitarian communist Chinese rule now, which China has fiendishly extended to Hong Kong, breaking a pledge to allow Hong Kong its freedom and governance---something it now is threatening to repeat with free, democratic Taiwan.
                But what of the ambiguous “one China, two systems,” a co-existence concept dreamed up by Mao’s comparatively progressive successor, Deng Xiaoping, in the late ‘70’s? This idea was a part of Deng’s overall attempted repair of the catastrophic damage done to China by Mao's Cultural Revolution, and “communism” that has manifested as little more than despotism, corruption, chaos. Deng famously “opened up” China to the world, with educational, economic, diplomatic, political reform (called “Boluan Fanzheng" or “eliminating chaos, returning to order”). Part of this liberalization was the idea that a more capitalistic China might eventually have so much in common with Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, that there would be no reason for military conflict. How sincere or realistic this plan was remains debatable. (Chiang Ching-Kuo, or CCK, laughingly called Deng’s proposal “one country, (we have) better system.”)
                Still, Deng’s “One Country, Two Systems” policy gave considerable hope to the remaining cadre of ruling Kuomintang nationalists in Taiwan, which translated into Taiwan’s government adopting a policy of appeasing China throughout the ‘80’s and into the ‘90’s. With the election of Chiang Ching-Kuo’s vice-president, Lee Teng-Hui, as Taiwan president in 1988---the first Taiwan-born president---and Deng’s brutal crackdown on burgeoning democracy in the infamous Tian An Men Square massacre, support for the “One Country, Two Systems” concept faded. Lee had been quietly pro-independence, but his successor, Chen Shui-Bian (2000-2008), became the first member of the Taiwan pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party to be elected president---met with much bluster and bellicosity from China. After Chen’s term ended in scandal, corruption, and imprisonment, the vestiges of KMT returned to power with Hong Kong-born Ma Ying-Jeou (2008-16) who adopted a controversial, Beijing-supplicating "Three No's" policy: "not against unification, no independence, and no use of force."

                The backlash against Ma's daring to suggest unifying Taiwan with communist China led to the election of the DPP’s Taiwan-born, western-educated Tsai Ing-Wen in 2016. Under still-current President Tsai, Taiwan made it formal policy to preserve its democracy and embrace de facto independence, while still pursuing healthy, amiable relations with China. Tsai was, and still is, backed overwhelmingly by Taiwan’s populace---ever more so since Beijing’s sinister military provocations following recent courageous visits to Taiwan by U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, members of U.S. congress, and U.S. state officials.
                So what is the real problem in this massive Chinese puzzle? Why the relentless crowing from Beijing? Why the lying, propaganda, hatred? Well, the answer is as simple as Taiwan history is not:
                 Xi Jinping.
                This president of China---one should keep “president” in quotes, because he is an authoritarian despot now engineering power for life, like Russian “president” Vladimir Putin---simply will not accept Taiwan’s right to remain---remain---a vibrant, bustling, progressive, independent, happy republic. Why? 
                Many in the U.S. reasonably assume that Xi’s motive must be financial, especially seeing as Taiwan produces effectively all the world’s microchips. But no. With billions of dollars having long been mutually, enthusiastically invested between the two countries since the end of KMT-imposed martial law in Taiwan in 1987, the idea is not convincing. Of course, there is strategic value: control of the microchip industry for purposes of blackmailing the world. Given the U.S. and much of Europe's open declaration of support for Taiwan, militarily and otherwise, the likelihood of invading for microchips seems remote.
                It really comes down to this:
                Taiwan is an embarrassment to Xi and the brutes of Beijing.
                Taiwan is a thorn in China's side for factors ranging from economic to political to technological to sociological. Consider: under President Tsai, Taiwan is hard at work on “green” progress, and is the only country in Asia to have legalized gay marriage. (China, with India, has contributed the infamous "Brown Cloud" of pollution that threatens the entire world, rendering moot their recent upping of renewable energies---and Beijing censors LGBTQ content from media and Internet.) More: Tsai's government plans to eliminate its three nuclear power plants, and to generate 20% of its energy from renewable energy by 2025. (While China leads the world in solar and wind energy---not hard to do---it currently has a whopping 47 nuclear power plants, gasp, with plans for 150 more in the next 15 years. It also creates 27 percent of the world's total global greenhouse gas emissions, with about 10,065 million tons of CO2 compared with the U.S. releasing about half that amount.) Taiwan has passed radical laws to protect and celebrate its sixteen indigenous peoples. (Oppression of Tibet aside, China has recently subjected about a million Uighur Muslims to torture, rape, “re-education,” murder.) Taiwan, long deficient in animal rights, has made enormous progress in passing laws to protect animals. (China, primarily responsible for the near extinction of elephants for their ivory, still overwhelmingly leads the world in illegal animal trafficking---largely for decoration, clothing, and "medicine.") As mentioned above, Taiwan is a bastion of traditional Confucianism, an attitude an philosophy grounded in notions of mutual respect, kindness toward others, filial piety (respect for family and elders) hard work---ideals largely destroyed during Mao’s “Cultural Revolution.” (Xi has, to his credit, promoted Confucianism in China, though it is fiendishly exploited as a tool to stoke nationalism, i.e. blindly following leaders/elders out of respect.) Taiwan is famous for offering financial aid (despite its limited budget), doing charitable work, wherever it might be needed, the world over. The extraordinary charitable organization, Tzu Chi, was founded in Taiwan (by Buddhist nun Cheng Yen) and has done incalculable good in rendering global humanitarian aid---including China!---since 1966.  (While China spent about $4 billion on foreign aid in 2016---compared with $38 billion from the U.S. in 2021, that "aid" is always in the form of influence-buying and peddling, de facto bribery built of loan defaults enabling China to take over infrastructure and buy influence, notably in Africa.) One must cite Taiwan’s superb containment of the COVID scourge introduced to the world by China, which is still struggling to control it (with millions probably dead.) While Taiwan’s economy is thriving, China’s COVID-ravaged society is in serious trouble. Finally, Taiwan is, and this cannot be said enough, a free country, and China is not. (China is formally known as the "people's democratic dictatorship," as its constitution states.) There is, of course, much more that could be said, but let these contrasts suffice.
                In other words, Xi and the communists are motivated by hubris, envy, pomposity, even simple irritation---with something out of the Adolf Hitler playbook thrown in: that is, if your country is in economic disarray, the convenient remedy is to demonize a group, a people, a country, in order to unite the populace with unthinking nationalism. In recent months, China banks have frozen accounts of the hard-working people who trusted them, prompting working class and poor in many cities to take to the streets, demanding their money. The government response? Typical Beijing: beat the hell out of them. Is it any wonder that Xi---especially after the brief, innocuous visit of Pelosi---increased the threats to “take back” Taiwan, ordering huge, truculent military “exercises” that amounted to a trial blockade? Taiwan is Xi’s boogie man.
                The point:
                With the world now going more and more fascist---Italy has installed a fascist president---and dictatorships from Russia to China to North Korea becoming more and more emboldened by social and politically disarray in the United States (thank you, Donald Trump), it has never, at least since WWII, been more vital to protect democracies.
                If the free countries of the world do not openly, flagrantly unite to protect the stellar, noble, independent democracy of Taiwan, the west might as well throw in the towel on opposing fascism anywhere. This is, in short, line-in-the-sand time. Nothing in recent history has more demanded it. China simply needs to be called on its lies, and noble Taiwan needs to be protected.
                Otherwise, if Beijing makes good on its threat, it seems certain that this would result in a cataclysmic conflict comparable to what is happening in Ukraine. If Xi and his megalomaniacal cadre were to actually wind up taking charge of the island, you can count on mass incarceration and murder of resistors, huge numbers of Taiwan's 23 million citizens sent to China’s “psychiatric prisons,” where they would be tied to beds, subjected to electric shock therapy, brainwashing, drugs, general torture. (There are tens of thousands such facilities in China, according to Safeguard Defenders---convenient ways to avoid the criminal justice system procedure with “civil commitment.”) Or worse, Taiwan citizens would be sent to concentration camps, as has happened to the poor Uighurs. The seizure of Taiwan would also, need it be noted, be cataclysmic for Asian political and economic stability, beginning with Japan, which already faces more than enough threat from North Korea and Russia.
                Finally, the Taiwan population, if I am any judge of the country, and history is any indicator, would never stop rebelling and rising up, no matter the consequences. Note, for example, that the founder of Taiwan chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp., Robert Tsao, recently donated NT$1 billion (US$32.79 million) to train a 3.3 million-strong militia in support of Taiwan's defense against a China invasion. More such patriotic muscle is certain to come.
                There is only one operative metaphor for a China invasion of Taiwan: the murder of an innocent.
                Which is to say, that great family in the house next door.

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                                    © 2022 Rip Rense. All rights reserved.

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TAIWAN, MY OTHER COUNTRY
(Sept. 22, 2022)

"Oh Shenandoah,
I long to see you,
Away, you rolling river.
Oh Shenandoah,
I long to see you,
Way, we're bound away
Across the wide Missouri."

         Many years ago, I think it was 1987, I attended a graduation concert by students in the music department of Fu-Jen Catholic University in Taipei, Taiwan.
          I was expecting a charming presentation by extremely talented young people, showcasing their various instruments, and I was not disappointed in that.
          But I was floored, stunned, by one particular performance that has remained moving in memory, ever since: the graduate choir singing the beloved traditional American folk song, “O Shenandoah.”
          At first, I was slightly amused in an “ugly American” way by the accent, but that vanished when I felt the sincerity accompanying the vocal beauty on display. I have heard a lot---I mean a lot---of music in my life, but I have never heard anything performed more earnestly, with more heart, more love, than that rendition of “O Shenandoah.” It left me with goose bumps, and in tears. I wondered how young people who had certainly never been out of Taiwan could invest this song with such reality, poignancy.
          And that was one of my first clues about the essence of Taiwan’s extraordinary spirit.
          Taiwan is the smell of fresh-baked boroh pastries, machine solvent, night market barbecue, temple incense, scooter exhaust, heavy wet air. It’s 3 a.m. yowling cats galloping over corrugated tin-roofed balconies, darting taxis blaring bad Chinese pop, old men arguing over games of Go in tiny parks behind bus stops, and off-key gongs and caterwauling singers in pop-up Chinese opera street performances. It’s tired, overworked young students in handsome school uniforms, and tired, overworked garage mechanics in torn, grimy T-shirts, endlessly cheery waitresses and waiters singing out, “Huan ying guan ling" (“we are honored to have you”), heroically dedicated teachers, brilliant nerd engineers, doting moms and dads with happy little kids---all sitting around together on flimsy aluminum stools, having doahua (tofu pudding) or yo tiao (long, fried donuts) at street stands. Taiwan is a raucous machine shop next to a frilly café named Alice in Wonderland next to a walk-in dentist next to a baby supply store next to a morning produce market next to a 7-11. It’s impersonal skyscrapers, boba tea (which it invented!), betel-nut juice stains in the streets, and frosty green-label bottles of Taiwan beer in refrigerators, and garbage trucks that, believe it or not, all play “Für Elise” by Beethoven. It’s New Year’s Eve bottle rockets and roaring roosters in rustic villages, and giant lantern festivals in the big cities. It’s scooter armies and jabbering pedestrian throngs and whooshing monorails and tons of rain that fall hard and deafening. It is serene mountain lakes and sunny tropical beaches and thick, funky jungles and lyrical fields of tea, and moody, rocky shorelines and wind making abstract music in forests of bamboo. It is happy and sad and joyous and heartbroken and exalting and sentimental and argumentative and deeply philosophical. A sunny day is called a “shiny day” and children are called “little friends.”
          In short, Taiwan is a real “you had to be there” kind of experience. And I recommend that you make it one. At first glance of Taipei, you might see only overpopulation and drab, gray, boxy apartment high-rises. After a few months, you won’t see either---instead only the invigorating, inspiring bustle. The charm of the place is in the culture, not the cement. The closest term I know for the infectiously madcap, almost naïvely impassioned atmosphere of Taiwan is the Mandarin word, ren-ching-wei, literally “people flavor spirit,” which connotes doing absolutely everything---from welcoming strangers to arguing to painting kitten faces to learning the piano to fixing bulldozers to tying zong-zi (sticky rice in bamboo leaves) to caring for those in need---with ardor, commitment, elan. It might sound tangential, but finding such western staples as irony and sarcasm in Taiwan humor is not an easy proposition. There is profound appreciation for life here.
          How and why? Well, I don’t know if the Taiwan attitude is rooted in Confucianism, or just came to emulate it, but either way, the term famously applies. Ethics, good behavior, civility, decency, hard work, devotion to family, respect for elders—all Confucian ideals---are as commonly found in Taiwan as they are not found in today’s USA. If this sounds corny to you, I submit that, given time in Taiwan, you would most likely start to admire these values, if not try to adopt them. They are catching. It is quite moving to see a society---even with all the grisly faults you would expect any society to have---attempt to comport itself with such an empathetic ideology, and such love of family.

          I lived in Taiwan for well over a year---six months in one particular stretch---and I think it’s fair to say that I know enough of the place to make these comments. If you want to get into the many fascinating particulars of the island---the ridiculously varied geography, topsy-turvy history, all the permutations of culture that vary from locale to locale (sometimes village to village)---by all means read travel and/or history books. I’m here to talk about the feel of the place, and how it stands alone, at least in my experience. And, yes, how it is independent.
          My former wife, a tremendous human being born and raised in Taiwan, and the reason for my time there, used to occasionally remark:
          “You know, Rip, Taiwan is a really special place. It’s like a secret place the world doesn’t know about.”
          At first, I took this comment with a grain or two of salt, chalking her enthusiasm up to understandable pride. But I eventually came to understand that she was right. It’s not easy to explain. You wind up trapped in hyperbole, claim, assertion, superlative, to the point of “protesting too much.” The sad fact that much of the world still does not know much about Taiwan, even with the ongoing deranged threats from China, does not help. (Please see accompanying commentary.) I mean, often as not, it’s Oh, you mean Thailand?
          Here is one truth. I have not traveled extensively in Asia, but I did spend a little time in Hong Kong (long before China took control, and fiendishly broke its promise to allow for self-rule). If you are at all curious about Taipei, or Taichung, or Tainan, or Kaoshiung---Taiwan’s booming, effervescent cities---well, they have the feel of small towns, in their warmth and ambience, compared to the New York complexity and aggression of Hong Kong. To return to Taipei---even with all its hyper-crowding and  energy overdrive---after a week in Hong Kong was to de-stress and be comfortable. Frenetic streets, terrible traffic and cacophony notwithstanding.
          I was lucky to travel all over the country: to the ethereal mountain retreat of Hsi-Tou, the little beaches of tropical Kenting in the south, the papaya and mango farms outside of Tainan, the white ginger-scented jungles north of Taipei, the “rainy city” (now drought city!) of Keelung on the northeast coast, the little Hakka (a nomadic Chinese clan whose name translates to “guest people”) village of Hsin-Pu (now not so little), all the major cities. I studied Mandarin in Taipei (enjoying the gusto of walking home each day through several miles of heavy foot traffic, and elephant stampede commuters), gave a few lectures about classical music with my then-wife (a professor of piano) at suburban high schools, tutored students in grammar, pronunciation, writing. I shoehorned my way regularly into various temples to worship various deities, bowing three times with huge sticks of smoking incense (bai bai); white-knuckled through careening high-speed taxi rides, hiked up mountains (not so daring as it sounds; I was in line with hundreds of others), drank pu-erh tea at sunset in a one-time Japanese mining village overlooking the ocean, picked seasonal strawberries along with hordes of giddy kids, declined offers to drink fresh snake blood for virility (which I hope no longer goes on), once walked all over Taipei in a pounding rain, sans umbrella, singing along with earphone-pumped Beatle songs at the top of my lungs. (Talk about nervous looks.)

           Funny the things that stick in memory. For some reason, I often think of one incredibly delicious cup of coffee that put me in a quasi-ecstatic state, sitting with my wife one afternoon in a dear little Taipei café. As we paused, simply watching the crazy parade of machine and people outside, the din of Mandarin washing over me, incomprehensible, the burnished wood interior comforting, a light rain falling outside, I really thought there was no better place in the world, ever. But that has more to do with me than Taiwan. . .maybe.
          You could say I got the cook’s tour of the island, but it was much more intimate than that, because I was welcomed into my former wife’s wonderful family---people who embodied ren-ching-wei to the hilt. The brothers were rollicking, great guys---both engineering geniuses---the sisters were sweet and a little scolding, and it combined for an earthy family atmosphere that I had never experienced. These were country folk, at heart, though all went on to enormous success, studying in the U.S., and working in Taipei. My former wife could look out the front window of her childhood home and see the fields where she had, as a little girl, fallen asleep on the backs of water buffalo on hot afternoons, courtesy of the local lady rice paddy planters. My very tough Hakka ex-mother-in-law, a widow early in life who singlehandedly raised five children, had a long lineage in the little hamlet of Hsin-Pu, and had spent about 45 years heroically teaching grade school there. Her story was bound up in Taiwan history: her husband was a fine water-colorist from China who came to the Taiwan countryside to paint, fell in love, and was marooned when the Communists took over China.  He designed the family home with a roof emulating a college graduate’s mortarboard, to instill the idea of scholarship in his kids.
          I have very fond and touching memories of spending several Chinese New Years in Hsin-Pu, where different families set off strings of firecrackers at pre-arranged moments alllllll night long, as prescribed by fortune-tellers for the banishment of bad luck. To the accompaniment of highly disturbed maniac roosters with pipes to rival Pavarotti. There were toasts, homemade feasts of local dishes, and endless pay-respect visits on New Year’s Day by neighbors, former students of my mother-in-law, all part of heartfelt tradition. (Hell, the whole country feels like one big family at New Year.)  There were evening bats that chased rocks you threw, thinking they were prey; bottle rockets from rooftops popping over fields, long morning walks through a tranquil valley of persimmon farms, then up the side of a mountain several hundred steps to a freezing hillside temple, where a troupe of shave-headed monks and nuns chanted O-mi-to-fo (Amida Buddha, a deity/concept of Shin Buddhism). And there were trips into the big temple in the nearby big city (well, medium) of Hsin-Chu, a kind of riot of antic families in new clothes (for New Year), rain, umbrellas, Chinese opera, the perpetually rising fingers of incense, a jigsaw puzzle of hawker stalls purveying everything from the trademark local dumpling to hot red bean soup and black sesame sweet rice balls (tang yuan.)
          Yes, of course, I experienced some very troubling moments and aspects of the country, as one would anywhere. There can be suffocating air pollution (thanks largely to China’s notorious “brown cloud” of particulate matter that periodically swoops in). I remember a woman in Hsin-Pu whose life and dreams of coming to the U.S. were ruined by a date rape, pregnancy, and subsequent insanity. There was the time I accidentally clipped a rear-view mirror on a car that happened to be filled with punk gangsters. Suffice to say I lived. There was the abysmal treatment of animals, and preponderance of sick, mangy cats and dogs, and while that problem persists, there has been much improvement since my time there (including legislation to protect animals, and the advent of many animal welfare organizations.) One especially poignant memory was when I took a few hours to trim and cut the matted fur of the family guard dog who normally let only family approach him. He looked at me with trust and gratitude as I cut clump after clump away, speaking to him gently, then managing to bathe him in soapy water and brush his fine coat out to a lustrous sheen. Ha-Lee---what a good boy he was! Well, I seem to be off on another tangent here. . .
          So why did I not remain in Taiwan, if I liked it so well? Stupidity, really. I placed more importance on my so-called journalism career back in this country, never mind that I was paid wretchedly, and too often treated like used tissue by some truly awful, awful people masquerading as editors. Despite what I unabashedly call the excellence of my work. In the end, the strain simply proved too much for the marriage. Such, sad to say, is life.
          But to get back to that college graduation concert featuring “O Shenandoah”. . .Taiwan is also, I must mention, Music Land. I do not exaggerate. People just exude do-re-mi. Put Taiwan blood under a microscope, and the cells appear as musical notes. Everybody, it seems, knows how to sing on key, or whistle (really well!), and usually to play instruments. I mentioned the Beethoven-broadcasting garbage trucks, well, that’s just a hint. Cars backing up play “There’s No Place Like Home” and “I Just Called to Say I Love You” (which, by the way, delightfully dogged me all over the island, from café to bus to taxi to 7-11, on my first visit there, way back in 1986), and cafes pulse with everything from opera to Sinatra to the late, beloved Taiwan songbird, Teresa Teng. People might not know the name of a piece, or its composer, but everyone seems to know such classic melodies as, for instance, the heart-rending 7th movement of “Scenes From Childhood,” by Robert Schumann. Hell, you hear the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s 9^th coming out of machine shops. The preponderance, the ubiquity of music---classical, jazz, and, yes, all the latest western trends in terrible pop (sorry to say)---are a phenomenon, nothing less. It seems that people in Taiwan simply can’t live without music, mostly pretty good music, and I believe---as countless studies, and many a philosopher and literary figure, from Shakespeare to Nietzsche, allege---that this plays an enormous role in the mental health, happiness, and ren-ching-wei of the place. I mean, every major city in this little 14,000-square mile land seems to have a symphony orchestra and lavish performing arts center. In fact, a visually arresting, downright spectacular new center just opened in 2018 in the southern port city of Kaohsiung, complete with huge symphony hall and opera house---built, ironically, by a Dutch company, a kind of poetic continuation of the 17^th century Dutch occupation of parts of Taiwan. It was the Dutch, by the way, who dubbed the place “Ilha Formosa,” or “beautiful island.”

          And the ilha is still just so formosa, in every important respect, literally and figuratively. The idea of China attacking and occupying Taiwan---for strictly hegemonic reasons disguised with sheer lies about the place being a “renegade province” (see accompanying article)---is too horrific to contemplate. To imagine this shimmering, buoyant, thriving crazy-quilt of humanity subjugated by the brutes of Beijing is just shattering. Taiwan not only is a de facto self-contained society and country, with no history of ever being part of Communist China (and little history of ever being designated, against its will, part of ancient China), but it is just a singular, vibrant, rambunctious place, drunk with freedom, relentlessly productive, doggedly committed to democracy, human rights, and. . .the best stuff of life.
          See? I told you. I’m reduced to superlatives. Maybe it's best to say that for many years now, whenever I hear the tender, poetic, wistful words of that loving paean to that almost mythic, American river in Virginia. . .
          I think only of Taiwan.

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